Sexing up the Sprout - taylor herring

Case Study: Sexing Up the Sprout
Client: UKTV Food

Objectives
UKTV Food asked us to create some noise around their Xmas programming. They wanted a quick, impactful idea that would really get people talking in the festive season and fully payback to the channel. We decided it was time to ‘sex up the sprout’ - UKTV Food would give the humble basilica a sexy seasonal makeover, the likes of which had never been seen before!

Strategy
For starters we linked up with top TV chef and every housewive’s favorite fantasy figure, Mr James Martin. We asked James to work up recipes for the following mouth-watering dishes; sprout ice cream, sprout curry, sprout crumble, the sprout egg and two delicious drinks - the sprout smoothie and the sumptuous sproutini!

Once the dishes had been tested and had passed the Taylor Herring taste panels standards, it was time to recreate that trusty old American Beauty shot for a mock poster campaign - only this time our lovely model would be wearing nought but sprouts! The tabloids were going to love it.

We placed another key focus on our two sprout drinks – the sproutini and the sprout smoothie. Our dedicated research department discovered that the Roman’s used Brassica’s (which the sprout family belong to) as a hangover cure some 2,000 years ago – as such we positioned the sprout smoothie as the ultimate Xmas hangover cure! Meanwhile our sproutini held the dubious honour of being the world’s first cocktail to contain sprouts, the ensuing coverage gave birth to the most talked about drink of the festive season!

Result
Our campaign for UKTV Food gave rise to an avalanche of branded sprout coverage! The channel liked our idea so much they commissioned a series of five minute films featuring the recipes. Newspaper coverage included The Mail, The Express, the Standard, The Star, The Guardian, The Independent On Sunday, The Sport and The Daily Record alongside numerous regional features. Sales of sprouts were up 10% and our delicious creations, the sproutini and hangover smoothie were sampled on both Richard and Judy and GMTV. Other TV coverage included a sprout discussion on Breakfast with Frost whilst TV Chef James Martin completed 17 regional radio interviews making sprouts and UKTV Food the biggest talking point of the week!

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